4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[Demo.Graph]

Weather Paradigm is +50% former speed, not +100%.

Yeah, you're correct.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Weather Paradigm and Virtual World are probably the strongest early game projects, unless you're Impact Rover rushing, then you're better off getting Command Nexus and swamping the AI with Rovers to take THEIR SPs.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Living refinery is pretty good early too. Taking it means you don't need to go Police for extra support if you're an aggressive faction, meaning you don't take a hit to your efficiency

 

[Average Manatee]

IMO Planetary Energy Grid is the strongest early game one because:

1. Energy Banks are expensive and hard to produce early when a base is small. 80 minerals per base is a ton.
2. You want it ASAP, because it actually rounds up which means you're often getting much more than +50% energy on those small bases. It's +2 energy per base basically immediately (2 energy for home square + 1 from pop production).
3. Energy is incredibly flexible and vastly simpler and easy to bend to your will vs. spending 1 extra mineral per turn at all your bases.

It's also nice that it seems like AIs generally don't go down that research path immediately in my games so there's a decent chance you can actually get it as an early project. It's not like WP where you have to get lucky and have your 2nd base have multiple mineral and food resources and dedicate all its production starting turn 10 to get it, instead you can get energy bank with 1 of your first 10 bases (much lower relative cost to your expansion) with decent reliability as long as no other AI has started it.

Weather Paradigm and Virtual World are probably the strongest early game projects, unless you're Impact Rover rushing, then you're better off getting Command Nexus and swamping the AI with Rovers to take THEIR SPs.

VW's problem is that it takes a long time to grow enough to where you need that extra drone suppression that its worth a network node. Unless you're university who gets them for free.

I find Command Nexus to be honestly pretty optional for impact rover rushes. I would only really want it if I was a faction without military bonuses trying to rush Yang. In a recent game Yang built it and I started the war by dropping 12 rovers on his shoreline to take it turn 1.

 

[Average Manatee]

The Weather Paradigm enables making boreholes faster. This does snowball. You go ahead with one former (ideally rover chassis bu often just infantry) to make roads so you don't lose any more turns moving. You can then build and maintain more formers with the additional production. The ability to get early boreholes and condensers on the right resources is very powerful as well. Weather Paradigm is the strongest Secret Project in the game by a large margin.

I'm not sure I agree. A borehole on a mineral resource is +8 minerals +2 energy. A Mine does +5-+7 minerals. So lets say each borehole on average improves production by 2 energy (convertable into 1 mineral) and 2 minerals. How many mineral resources do you have? Maybe 4? That's +12 minerals. Definitely good, but it also takes a shit ton of time to finish and that eats into your RoI if it takes 30 turns to get all those boreholes up.

Condensors are also kind of weird, because extra food doesn't really help you NOW, it helps you LATER when you get more pops. So that's another delayed payoff ontop of the delay to get them built.

After running the numbers and considering the strategy utility I'm fairly confident in my assessment that Planetary Energy Grid is the most useful by a pretty decent margin. Literally hundreds of energy per turn for my early game and thousands of minerals saved the instant you finish a 300 mineral SP.

 

[civac2]

I was talking about the time past lifting of restrictions for the borehole snowball. The ability to make borehols on resources earlier is just a (very strong) bonus. Also note that forests, farms, mines and even roads in some cases will also finish faster with the WP. Early condensors pre resource restriction lifting aren't that useful most of the time.

Planetary Energy Grid is a very strong secret project. However, it is not close to being in the same league as the WP because nothing is. You could make a case for Planetary Transit System which is also much stronger than the PEG.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

By its effects the Manifold Harmonics secret project would be a lot more interesting if it came a lot earlier in the tech tree

Increases resources harvested from monolith and fungus squares depending on your overall PLANET rating, as follows

• 0 Planet: +1 Energy
• +1 Planet: +1 Nutrient, +1 Energy
• +2 Planet: +1 Nutrient, +1 Energy, +1 Mineral
• +3 Planet: +1 Nutrient, +2 Energy, +1 Mineral

Wow that would be SO strong in the hands of the Gaians and Cult. Might even make Green Economy more viable for a lot of other factions.

 

[Cael]

By its effects the Manifold Harmonics secret project would be a lot more interesting if it came a lot earlier in the tech tree

Increases resources harvested from monolith and fungus squares depending on your overall PLANET rating, as follows

• 0 Planet: +1 Energy
• +1 Planet: +1 Nutrient, +1 Energy
• +2 Planet: +1 Nutrient, +1 Energy, +1 Mineral
• +3 Planet: +1 Nutrient, +2 Energy, +1 Mineral

Wow that would be SO strong in the hands of the Gaians and Cult. Might even make Green Economy more viable for a lot of other factions.

I believe the Gaians get 4f/3p/3e on fungal squares at the end of the tech tree even without the Manifold Nexus. Monolith gives +2 to all on top of that, I think? It has been too long since I played the game...

 

[Average Manatee]

Gaians get 4/4/5 w/ manifold nexus and all tech, so w/o manifold nexus it should be 3/3/3.

The problem is that like another 1/2/2 or something of that comes in the final third of the tech tree. At the start of the game Gaians w/ manifold nexus and +3 planet would only get 3/2/1. Which is... not bad, it's a better early forest (and forests are already kinda OP...), but seeing that you need to be both Gaian and green and get manifold nexus it probably wouldn't be that useful. You'd want to move at least one of those fungus nutrient resource techs earlier as well, +1 food would make everyone as good as Gaians (unfortunately without that 2/2/1 is kinda crap).

 

[Cael]

Gaians get 4/4/5 w/ manifold nexus and all tech, so w/o manifold nexus it should be 3/3/3.

The problem is that like another 1/2/2 or something of that comes in the final third of the tech tree. At the start of the game Gaians w/ manifold nexus and +3 planet would only get 3/2/1. Which is... not bad, it's a better early forest (and forests are already kinda OP...), but seeing that you need to be both Gaian and green and get manifold nexus it probably wouldn't be that useful. You'd want to move at least one of those fungus nutrient resource techs earlier as well, +1 food would make everyone as good as Gaians (unfortunately without that 2/2/1 is kinda crap).

Darn. I need to get back into the game now... Can't believe it has been so long since I played it.

 

[oldbonebrown]

Manifold Harmonics should give an additional mineral for a faction with +4 Planet

 

[Average Manatee]

Honestly Manifold Harmonics could give you an 8/8/8 square and it would still be mostly useless. By that point every player's bases are producing a hundred minerals and hundreds of energy and research per turn, transcence is literally the next tech and you can rush everything rushable with energy. On the other hand you're not going to have the former turns to redo many squares in your empire in that timeframe. Even if you could wave a magic wand to redo all that terraforming you'd save like... a tenth of a turn on average.

Really, once you get orbital energy the effective tech tree is finished and the rest only exists as a buffer to give the rest of the world a chance to kill you. Orbital food doubles your pop, orbital energy then gives you enough cash to rush buy on half of your bases every turn. Orbital minerals also boosts you but you hardly need it since it's much later

Actually by the time you have manifold harmonics you're better off nuking yourself with fungal missiles, which every colony can have rush bought in 1 turn. Lmao

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

It's why we're talking about how it should have been buildable from an earlier tech.
The game lore and mechanics pretty much indicates that humans, or at least some human factions, should at some point stop seeing Planet's fauna and flora as enemies and start seeing them as allies. Which means all that annoying fungus stops being an issue and starts being an asset.

But the way the game was made simply doesn't back it at all. Sure, Gaians can get some use out of fungus, and fungus can help vs pollution, but you are better off turning everything into forests, as a rule. Hybrid Forest facility make it make more sense, but It's still largely the player making fungus disappear. That's not very eco-friendly, and it ends with both the Planet-Friendly factions (Gaians, Cult) and the Planet-Unfriendly factions (Believers, Morganites) turning everything into forests, with the odd crawled mine and borehole here and there. It's a stupid convergence between factions who believe Chiron should be preserved and factions who want to turn Chiron into Earth 2.0 or/and strip-mine it.

Also, don't late-game techs allow you to build improvements on top of fungus, like farms and stuff? How does this even work?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah apparently forests do not piss off the planet, which is weird because it's a foreign invasive species. You'd think forests would anger Chiron even more than mining because you're literally out competing the natural wild-life.

Edit : So I double checked and it's even worse; Forests actually undo ecological damage. So if you build forests you actually counter act the effects of pollution and mining. So not only does introducing an invasive species not anger Chiron, the planet actually loves it. It's a really poorly implemented mechanic.

Per the wiki :

Formula​

The ecological damage formula is complex:

1. For each base total the number of Mines, Solar Collectors, Farms, Soil Enrichers, Roads, Mag Tubes, Condensers, Mirrors, and Boreholes. Items in squares which are actually being worked count double.
2. Add an extra +8 for each Borehole, +6 for each Mirror, and +4 for each Condenser.
3. Subract 1 for each Forest.
4. Halve if base has Tree Farm, and Eliminate if also has Hybrid Forest.
5. Divide this value by 8, and reduce by up to 16 plus # of previous damages. Set this number aside.
6. Take the number of minerals produced this turn (but not from Orbit).
7. If result from 5 was reduced by less than 16+#, reduce result 6 by remaining amount.
8. Divide minerals by 1 plus # of Centauri Preserve, Temple of Planet, Nanoreplicator.
9. Sum the values of (5) and (8), and add +5 for each major atrocity.
10. If Alpha Prime is at perihelion (20 years out of every 80), double your value.

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Ecological_damage_(SMAC)

 

[Average Manatee]

Also, don't late-game techs allow you to build improvements on top of fungus, like farms and stuff? How does this even work?

Only roads work, everything else is disabled I think. And only the secondary "slot" can be built in, another primary "slot" improvement (farm/forest) will replace fungus

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Yeah apparently forests do not piss off the planet, which is weird because it's a foreign invasive species. You'd think forests would anger Chiron even more than mining because you're literally out competing the natural wild-life.

Edit : So I double checked and it's even worse; Forests actually undo ecological damage. So if you build forests you actually counter act the effects of pollution and mining. So not only does introducing an invasive species not anger Chiron, the planet actually loves it. It's a really poorly implemented mechanic.

Per the wiki :

Formula​

The ecological damage formula is complex:

1. For each base total the number of Mines, Solar Collectors, Farms, Soil Enrichers, Roads, Mag Tubes, Condensers, Mirrors, and Boreholes. Items in squares which are actually being worked count double.
2. Add an extra +8 for each Borehole, +6 for each Mirror, and +4 for each Condenser.
3. Subract 1 for each Forest.
4. Halve if base has Tree Farm, and Eliminate if also has Hybrid Forest.
5. Divide this value by 8, and reduce by up to 16 plus # of previous damages. Set this number aside.
6. Take the number of minerals produced this turn (but not from Orbit).
7. If result from 5 was reduced by less than 16+#, reduce result 6 by remaining amount.
8. Divide minerals by 1 plus # of Centauri Preserve, Temple of Planet, Nanoreplicator.
9. Sum the values of (5) and (8), and add +5 for each major atrocity.
10. If Alpha Prime is at perihelion (20 years out of every 80), double your value.

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Ecological_damage_(SMAC)

Holy shit, that's pretty weird.
Maybe Planet just wants to make new friends?
But yeah, Forests should cause minor pollution, only giving the subtraction with Hybrid Forest.
That would be interesting actually, suddenly carpet-foresting becomes a real decision in the early game.
I always liked something the Planetfall mod for Civilization IV did - keeping fungus alive in your bases' radius actually helped with the pollution.

(Planetfall was also neat in that how planet-friendly you were was very much practical, it was something you did and not something you got from SE choices and then just printing Boreholes like anyone else)

 

[Average Manatee]

I mean eco damage has never really mattered either way unless you somehow don't garrison your colonies. And global warming generally hurts AIs way more than you

 

[oldbonebrown]

Global warming really hurts my willingness to continue playing. It's a micromanagement nightmare.
Maybe this is why you should just put forests everywhere.

 

[Average Manatee]

I don't think forests really help, most of the pollution is gonna be done by AIs unless you are mining like 3 boreholes per base. Spamming the solar shade option should help some.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

It's kinda funny how strong global warming is in SMAC, like, if you melted all of Earth's icecaps right now, the sea levels would rise average 70 meters. Meanwhile in SMAC, you can turn Chiron into a Waterworld. AFAIK Chiron is a greenhouse planet hotter than Earth, does it have giant monster icecaps at the poles somehow? Where is all that water coming from? Water stored in xenofungus? Is Planet actively trying to drown humans by somehow releasing underground water from beneath the crust?

I don't think forests really help, most of the pollution is gonna be done by AIs unless you are mining like 3 boreholes per base. Spamming the solar shade option should help some.

I recall AI mods like Kyrub's and Thinker had to nerf pollution because the stronger AI was sending everyone to the depths of the ocean.

 

[fredsteel]

Holy fuck.
I’ve been sinking an unhealthy amount of time into Alpha Centauri for the past few months, and wow, this game is something else. I’m fairly new to Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds’ games—my first encounter was Civ V, but back then, I was more into shallow action games like Assassin’s Creed and Prototype during my zoomer phase, so Civ didn’t really grab me at the time.
There are a couple of decent documentaries on Sid and Brian on YouTube, but nothing that goes deep into SMAC. There’s one guy who did an hour-long video, but he spends most of the time talking about Mark Fisher... He barely touches on the gameplay and framework of SMAC, so I bailed. I might start looking for written interviews with Sid and Brian from when the game launched—if anyone’s got links, I’d appreciate it.

I’ve been playing against thinker AI, and it’s been a massacre. It’s so brutal that I’ve had to drop to the second-lowest difficulty just to stay afloat. Right now, I’m playing as Lady Deirdre, and I got lucky with my starting spot—isolated on the eastern continent. I’m at Turn 224, so things are starting to heat up.
Naval expansion? I’m clueless. Air units? Haven’t even figured them out yet. And the tech tree... I keep losing direction because I don’t have enough experience with all the techs yet, and everything looks good. On top of that, Morgan, the sole proprietor of the middle continent, who’s the second strongest faction, declared war on me, and I’m barely keeping my economy and military together. I’m already making things harder by automating Formers and Crawlers most of the time—the former(lol) seem okay, but I’m not sure if the AI handles Crawlers properly.

My goal for this game was to get an Ascension victory (which I’ve never done before), but I’m starting to doubt I’ll make it.
How do I handle the late-game chaos and reduce the overwhelming amount of information? Any tips on improving my war game so I don’t completely crash and burn?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Don't bother with artillery, they're a bit shit.
Absolutely focus on your airforce, especially interceptors. The AI will spam them and you need a response to that. The problem with ground attack aircraft is that the AI also spams a lot of AAA units (so should you to protect your ground forces) so focus mainly on interceptors to counter enemy aircraft.
Choppers are nice though because they can attack multiple times a turn. If you don't mind warcrimes you can outfit them with nerve gas and just delete cities with them.

Try not to over build your units. It's tempting to outfit them with the best gear but that makes them really long to build. Instead designate a defensive unit and an offensive unit schematic; defensive units get the shittiest weapon but best armour, AAA and should be set to defender, and offensive units are, well, the opposite.
Infantry are a little different as they are so slow that giving them a slight mix would probably be fine without making them too expensive, but only for attacking infantry and even then there should still be an offensive bias. Garrison infantry should only have the best armour and the basic gun, because you aren't attacking with them.
There is no point in giving planes armour because you'll be using them to fight other planes and plane on plane combat only uses the attack stat, even on the defense, iirc. The only time planes use defense is if it takes fire from ground units, and the AI rarely uses SAM on their designs. Anyone can attack choppers though, so maybe a little armour isn't too bad but I'd just leave them naked anyway to keep them cheap.

The unit design screen in SMAC isn't great. You'll have to do a bit of pruning now and then because the game will auto-generate shitty designs.

 

[civac2]

Thinker has higher tech costs. There is a longer period with Impact+Synthmetall/Plasma stuff running around. Artillery is not terrible there.

After some games experience it's better to turn off auto-designs in the game options.

 

[Average Manatee]

War can be kind of weird, the game rotates between offense being overpowered and defense being... well not overpowered but powerful, depending on tech level.

- For anyone with money, make a cheap version of all units that are trained (+1 starting morale), then upgrade it with energy to a better model with a more useful ability. The morale sticks around. This can be a significant improvement, either enough to win your first fight and gain more morale, or boosting you enough to become elite and get +1 move.
- For offense you generally want max/1/2 rovers. Soporific gas pods give the enemy a -25% combat penalty and are the best special ability for pure combat imo. These units should ideally never end their turn outside of a base, and they are useful on defense as well if you can snipe something in between your bases and theirs and then get back to base for safety. You can get Soporific gas pods quite early, it's just in a weird part of the tech tree that no one wants to go down.
- For defense, I like max/max/1 units with heavy artillery. The advantage of this over pure defensive infantry is that you can bombard which can really soften up enemies. This also protects you against enemy bombardment. The cost is about 1.5-2x normal infantry but its worth it IMO. If you can't break a base with impact rovers then park your artillery infantry in a forest (defensive bonus) and spam bombard until their defenders lose 10-20% HP and then you can usually win. Note that due to arcane upgrade rules you can only upgrade artillery units to other artillery units so you can't do the trained trick before you can use two abilities at once.
- One thing I've considered is trying transports with maximum armor. This would allow you to make infantry as your offensive units for their juicy +25% base attack bonus and transport them next to the base. Haven't gotten a chance to use it yet but will see how it works in my next game if I can remember to.
- For air force the thing is to just go all-in and swamp them with the best attacking aircraft you can. The AI doesn't really defend against it well while you utterly rape every non-combat unit outside of a base and every base that doesn't have the perfect AAA defender and an aerospace complex. Sure once in a while they'll intercept your fighters but then you kill their interceptors and just keep winning. The AI spends most of its time replacing its shit units that can't defend against aircraft while you spend yours making more aircraft.

Also, take note of your economy. Unfortunately military is highly, highly slanted in favor of ICSing, especially with police state for more support. An empire of 20 packed colonies that only need 10 formers (to lay down quick forests that produce just enough food and minerals to spam cheap units) can field an unstoppably large army of hundreds of rovers that a 5 colony empire can't hope to match. Small forest-based economies pre-tree farms don't scale well because they have huge troubles growing between 3-5 pop, but that doesn't matter if what you want is minerals and support limit.

 

[Average Manatee]

Playing a game now where I rushed Human Genome Project. I am Drones, is an entirely random faction game including myself. I gotta say, it feels super strong, possibly the strongest early SP.

The advantage is that (at least in Thinker, not sure if drones worked like this in vanilla) you can grow to size 2 with no police at all even with max bureaucracy penalty. This is quite a buff over needing immediate police at size 1. Not needing police means you can go Free Market for massive early game energy. I also got Planetary Energy Grid which I'll maintain is a bit overpowered. My rushing and income is insane, 200 energy/turn with 63 impact rovers, Synthetic Fossile Fuels (giving 6 attack missile launchers) being 3 turns away and I'll have the income to upgrade immediately. Just gonna conquer the shit out of this game.